Affiliate Programs
You Are Not Your Audience
Niche participants were lazy and didn’t really want to work hard to overcome their issues; rather, they would prefer to just take some pills to make them temporarily feel better. Apparently he hadn’t done well in his business and was saying that he went to a whole lot of effort and time for nothing in return. He was looking for validation or his feelings and was wondering if anyone was making money in the niche.
He also shared that he had overcome personal issues with anxiety and depression and figured he knew all the issues and solutions well.
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I responded with a short thought or two. Here is what I told him …
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I don’t think you really know or understand your marketplace or how to position your business in it. Just because you once suffered from the same issues you’re trying to address in your business doesn’t mean that everyone else in this marketplace is just like you are. They aren’t. There is a saying among marketers … “you are not your audience!”
Honestly, I would suggest you research the market thoroughly. You could easily do it in a day online.
- Find out what the prospects in this marketplace are searching for in terms of advice and solutions
- Focus on either anxiety or depression as your target marketplace for prospects for your business but not both – they are not the same and the solutions to issues are different. Certainly, some people have issues with both disorders but you can branch out later as you know your marketplace better. It’s almost always best to focus a new information business on one niche topic at a time.
- See what the successful sellers and web sites are doing, what they are selling as offers, and what free content they are providing.
- Notice where the successful niche businesses are marketing and promoting for leads, products, and affiliate offers. These are the same places you will want to be familiar with and promote to your audience.
- Read this article: 10 Tips on How to Research Your Competition
- Reverse engineer the top authority sites in the niche marketplace (lots of tools available to do this – start at SimilarWeb – free version)
- Visit ClickBank, Amazon books, Kindle, Barnes & Noble and other book and digital product outlets to see what topics within the marketplace are receiving most of the attention (best sellers, most popular, etc)
- Visit the Dummies books website and search on your topics. Buy several of their books in the niche and see what they are focusing on. (The authors of these books do lots of research in the marketplace before a book is ever written – they know the issues well and you should follow their lead)
- Google the very best search phrases in the niche then visit the top twenty sites returned for each search. See what these businesses are doing, what they are focusing on, join their newsletters. Yes this takes a little work, but IMO it’s the best way to learn what the top authority sites in the niche are doing, what they’re successfully selling, and how they are positioning their businesses.
- Sign up for Google Alerts to keep abreast of the latest events and happenings (news) in the niche so you understand all the issues and the cutting edge of the various solutions.
These are just a few ideas of how to do some research to better understand the niche that you decide upon.
Remember, you are not your audience … but you can tap into your audience and see what the conversations and selling activity is like. You don’t have to copy the most successful sellers in your niche – but you can learn a lot from them and follow their lead regarding lots of the various aspects of Internet education and selling.
To your online business success,
Steve Browne
www.SteveBrowneDirect.com